Yasiel Puig Is Stuck In The Minors

So all baseball fans were introduced to Yasiel Puig in Spring Training this year when he batted a modest .517! In 58 ab’s he scored 16 runs, had 30 hits, 3hr, 11rbi and 4sb. He slugged .828 with a total ops of 1.328! That led Spring for the NL with anyone who had at least 50 pa’s.

However you may remember the Dodgers making a huge trade last year and acquiring Adrian Gonzalez and Carl Crawford, which presents a problem. There is no DH in the NL (yet) so where do you put Puig? The 3 outfielders Matt Kemp, Andre Ethier and Crawford are signed through 2019, 2017, and 2017 respectively. Sometimes teams will throw a guy at 1b to get his bat in the lineup, however AGON is signed through 2018 as well! All four of those players are well into the 8 figures a year so there is no chance of cutting them, the only hope would be to trade one of the outfielders or use Puig as insurance in the event of an injury. UNless they can convince someone to change positions and move to the infield.

In the minors so far Puig is batting .311 in 16 games with an ops over 1.0. He is only 1 hr behind the aa leader in homers (another Dodger coincidentally) however due to an injury and an arrest he has 39 less plate appearances.

At the moment it appears that Puig will stay in the minors as there is nowhere for him to go. Can they convince Ethier to move to the infield? Can the Dodgers swing a trade for the hot hitting Crawford now that he has some value? I can’t see them trading Kemp or Ethier, those guys have been lifelong Dodgers. Kemp was drafted by the Dodgers, Ethier was drafted by Oakland but traded to LA before he ever hit the majors.